While the fight with The Quintuplets was frantic and fast paced, the fight with Greg was the exact opposite. It had essentially become a game of cat and mouse. Einstein would take a shot, then flee between the trees to create enough distance before shooting again.
Gregg was growing more and frustrated as time dragged on. He was actually quite quick and agile despite his large size and would normally have no troubles catching up with a dogg, however in the tight confines of a beachside forest Einstein and her dogg had the clear advantage. Whatsmore he kept unexpectedly tripping over and giving her more opportunities to fire upon him. He couldn't for the life of him figure out what he was tripping on. Normal bushes and roots would usually not hinder his movements at all. But everytime he turned back to find out what his leg had gotten caught on he saw nothing.
Again, as he charged forward through a gap between some trees he tripped face forward. But this time he had been waiting for it and he looked down as he was falling. He saw the tentacle that had stretched into his path pulling away. He followed it as it wrapped around suspicious rock and shifted colours to blend in naturally with the surrounding. Two bullets hit him in the side of the head in punishment for his distraction. Luckily they didn't hit anything important, just his brain.
He couldn't afford the time to investigate the rock while ignoring Einstein, so he went for the simplest solution and tried to smash the rock. He grabbed a tree that was young enough for him to wrap his hands around and pulled with his considerable strength. He pulled the tree out from the roots, taking two more shots in the time it took. He lifted it up into an overhead downward swing, only to discover that the rock was gone.
With the sounds of a whip cracking, two tentacles cracked into his elbow joints, causing him to drop the tree onto his own head. He grunted as he took another bullet to the liver. At least he now knew that he was in fact facing two opponents, one fleeing coward and one camouflaging coward.
The Scientist part of his brain told him that logically this was a fight better suited for Stallion or the Quintuplets. But he wasn't about to hand them an easy kill to gain DNA' favour. No, he'd crush these two himself.
Many of the races of Siren that made up his body had an enhanced sense of smell and the notorious BIG race, the slippery skins, had eyes that could detect body heat. He sniffed at the air and picked up something unusual wrapped around the trunk of a palm tree to his left. Neither his regular vision or his heat sense saw anything. Pehaps it was a little misshapen?
Greg already knew this gutless sneak was tricky. He charged the tree, shoulder first, intending to knock it over. A dark eye opened up on the trunk and grew wide at seeing the approaching behemoth. Tomas leaped down from where he had flattened and camouflaged himself into the tree trunk. He managed to dodge the tackle but Greg followed it up with a kick upon seeing Tomas jump down. His foot landed squarely in Tomas'squishy center. Tomas was big, but Greg was much bigger. The kick lifted him off the and sent him rolling back several meters. Thankfully he had no bones to break.
Greg moved to follow up with a crushing stomp onto Tomas but from behind, sharp teeth dug into his calf. Dogalogue bit down and shook his head about, ripping skin and flesh apart. It was alright for Greg, he had more where that came from. He kicked his leg Forward to dislodge the teeth. Dogalogue retreated immediately to where Einstein was waiting trying to repair the palm leaf rifle. It had fallen apart after overheating. Palm leaf not being the best material for ballistics even with Fred's potential unlocking power.
She gave up when Dogalogue reached her and threw it to the ground, " Tomas, keep him occupied for a bit! I'm going to get a new weapon!" She called out, jumping onto Dogalogue and riding into the jungle.
"Oh no you don't," Greg called out grabbing a rock to hurl at her. His arm was caught by a tentacle mid throw and the rock flew far off course.
Greg slammed both fists down into the ground in frustration, "Raaaaar, Fine! You wanna die first? I'll give you what you want!" He spun around to where he had kicked Tomas earlier and saw…nothing.
Greg went into a rage kicking rocks and knocking down random trees. He was hurting himself more than doing anything productive. After a full minute of smashing things he stood in in a clearing of broken trees and rocks. No Octopus though. At least he felt calmer now. He sniffed the air and found Tomas' scent again trailing off into the jungle. He gave chase.
Tomas swung from tree to tree like an 8 armed monkey. After he snuck far away from the rampaging Greg, he decided to put some distance between them. The giant obviously had some way of seeing though his octopus camouflage. This surprised Tomas as octopi were, in his opinion, the best animal in the world at adaptive camouflage. That kick had hurt like heck despite his soft body absorbing the worst of it.
The giant had stopped rampaging and picked up his trail again
Seems like Tomas would not be getting away. But no matter, he had more tricks up his sleeve. If all went well, he wouldn't even need to wait for Einstein to return. He found a good place to set lie in ambush.
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Greg was nimbly dodging between trees despite his large size. Without invisible tentacles tripping him up all the time he practically flew through the trees. He sniffed the air and adjusted his course. He was close. The scent was within a nearby copse of trees. He ran straight into the trees pushing them aside and scanned about for any sign of his foe.
Greg grinned, the bastards had hid again, but he was sloppy and hasty this time. Greg saw what he assumed to be a tentacle, poorly camoflaged as a vine, wrapped around one of the trees. "Gotcha," he declared as he leapt forward to grab the tentacle. You can imagine his embarrassment when it turned out to be an actual vine. He ripped it off the tree.
While he was distracted with the vine Tomas had wrapped around the tree trunks Tomas fell down on him from above. Eight strong tentacles wrapped around his arms, legs, body, face and neck, trying to squeeze the life out of Greg. His skin changed to bright yellow with flickering blue rings.
Greg struggled for a moment as his breathing and movement were restricted by the tentacles but bit by bit he slowly began to overpower them. He strained as he brought his arm up to grab the tentacle on his face and pull it off. Each suction cup stuck on my firmly to his face and had to be pulled off with a loud 'pop'. One right one his eyeball threatened to pull it out but Greg managed to wiggle it off.
"You messed up, idiot." Greg rasped through his constricted throat. "I'm not letting go of you now." He clenched down on the tentacle in his hand. He opened his mouth wide, his teeth were a jagged lineup of the sharpest teeth each race on siren possessed. He slowly brought the tentacle to his mouth. One tentacle unwrapped from around his waist and coiled around his wrist pulling tight to stop him. It wasn't enough, inch by inch he brought the tentacle closer and closer untill it was in his mouth. He bit down.
"Aaaahhhh!" Tomas screamed out in pain.
"Shho yoouuu cannn shhkreeam?" Greg's voice slurred around all the octopus flesh and blood in his mouth.
Tomas redoubled his efforts to pull Greg's wrist back and actually had some success but Greg's jaws were firmly shut around his tentacle.
The tentacle around his neck tightened too and combined with the blood and filling his mouth, he was having more and more trouble breathing. His body struggled to fight against the strain.
A tentacle reached up and pulled Greg's jaw open. Greg tried to fight it but found his strength waning. Slowly the tentacles unwound from his arms and legs. Yet Greg didn't move to take advantage of his freedom. The last tentacle to release was the one around Greg's neck. Tomas hopped down off of Greg and nursed his wounded tentacle. Greg continued struggling for breath.
"What.." he gasped.
"Octopi are poisonous. You messed up, idiot." Tomas said.
A 12 cm blue ring octopus has enough poison in its bite to kill 26 men. As a were-octopus, Tomas possessed poison ten times more potent than that. That's before taking into account that with his new body, his octopus form was over 2 meters big. He only needed the opportunity to get close enough to bite his foe and then to live long enough for the poison to take effect in order to win any fight.
Tomas transformed and held his arm, "Damn this stings." He complained. He turned and made his way back towards the beach, leaving Greg to die alone.
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Einstein arrived at the beach on an out of breath Dogalogue. The sky had fully darkened now. Fred and Sonia were chatting nearby the corpse of the Quintuplets.
"This won't be enough to take out DNA Jellyfish, but if you can point me in the direction of a reputable uranium refinery or even a simple particle accelerator, I'm sure I can increase the power ten-fold."
"I spent all my life on this beach. Don't know the words you just said."
"Ah don't worry about it. I'm sure we'll be able to kill him!"
"Hims me boss. Gave me power to talk. Don't wanna kill hims."
"Haha thats the spirit! We'll find a way to keep him alive and torture him!"
"Fred!" Einstein called out, "Tomas is in trouble, I need another weapon!"
"Oh, Einstein, you didn't finish off the big one yet?"
"That's what I'm saying, I need a weapon to go back and help Tomas."
"But, I don't have any more weapons. The mech is out of coconut milk too."
"Gah! Let's make sometimes then you useless cucumber skin."
"That was a weak racial slur, even for you."
"Fred!"
"Ok ok let's make something."
The two Scientist scientists got to work on some new weapons in the dark. They got so excited About what they were making that they lost track of time and didn't even notice when Tomas strolled back onto the beach in human form.
"Hi guys," he said.
"Ahh!!! Who are you!?" Einstein screamed and pointed the sea shell minigun at him.
Tomas held his hands up, "Don't shoot, it's me."
"Oh Tomas, you're here. Good." Fred said, looking up from his work. He had forgotten entirely why he was making weapons in the first place.
"Yeah I took care of the big one. Do you guys have any bandage's or anything?"
An unconscious body and a ball of meat fell from the sky into the sand by the workshops. The thuds made everyone jump and Einstein came so close to squeezing the trigger and cutting Tomas in half.
"Heyyyy dude's! Guess who's back!"